Although not a mathematician herself, Reid had a deep understanding of mathematicians. Her sister Julia Robinson was a distinguished mathematician at UC Berkeley, the first woman president of the American Mathematical Society, the first woman mathematician elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and a winner of a MacArthur Fellowship in 1983. Reid's Julia: A Life in Mathematics memorialized her younger sister's life. Her brother-in-law was Raphael Robinson, a prominent number theorist also at UC Berkeley.